


It's Only Logical

by nirejseki



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), Star Trek
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Trek Fusion, Len is half-Vulcan, M/M, Mick is part Klingon, Short One Shot, but he's definitely no Spock, just because, this is why you don't pon far and run
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-30
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2019-01-26 18:37:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12563664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirejseki/pseuds/nirejseki
Summary: Leonard Snart doesn't know much about his real father. His Vulcan father.Well, he doesn't know much other than the fact that the jerk left him on a pre-contact planet that doesn't even believe aliens are real, anyway.So, you know. Fuck the Vulcans.





	It's Only Logical

**Author's Note:**

> For the tumblr prompt: Okay but please imagine Len as Vulcan/half Vulcan. Like it makes sense, the logical analytical mind great for numbers and countdown, the hatred of showing emotion, the aversion to being touched.

Leonard Snart doesn't know much about his real father. 

Oh, he knows what some people would consider the _important_ part, namely that his father was not of a terrestrial origin - rather important, given the fact that most people on Earth don't think aliens are real and that anyone who does believe in them is crazy - but what he knows beyond that is fairly limited.

He knows that his father had been involved in a terrible space battle of some variety, causing him to abandon his ship for a lifepod that, in turn, was far cast off course until a meteorite dragging it in its gravitational field brought it down to Earth, badly damaged. 

He knows his mother - his stupid, city-born mother, who'd been out on a field trip with her school, so painfully young - found him there and smuggled him home with her, telling him (rightfully) that he would be hunted down in the countryside, but that no one would ever look for him in the slums of the city.

No one ever looks for anything in the slums of the city. 

Len knows that his mother nursed his father back to health in her broken down flat, where her alcoholic father was so stupefied and absent he never noticed. 

He knows that his mother and his father got close.

He knows that his father fell into a fever of some sort.

He knows -

Well.

He knows that his father was rescued, after a time. 

He knows that his father left, and never came back.

He _doesn't_ know why. 

He doesn't know who his father _was_ (is?) as a person, he doesn't know what he did, what he liked, what he disliked, he doesn't know whether he was kind or cruel or -

He doesn't know. 

His father knew his mom was pregnant when he left, he knows that much. He wouldn't have left her the tapes otherwise.

Len watched the tapes avidly as a child, greedily looking for indications of something about his father, something about himself, but it was nothing but lessons on Vulcan culture.

Vulcans.

That's what they called themselves, his father's people.

His people, Len supposes, but for all that he was born half a Vulcan, he was raised a Jew, and for his mother's people - _his_ people, much more than the Vulcans have ever been - it is the line of the mother that counts.

So, you know.

Fuck the Vulcans. 

His father abandoned him and never returned, undoubtedly embarrassed by his half-breed son; his mother married too hastily to hide her own embarrassment, and suffered for it; his mother _died_ , still staring up at the stars for a man who would never see her again.

But Len still has those tapes.

Your emotions are overpowering, they said; you must be reasonable and logical at all times.

You've gotta be hard, you gotta be cold, his dad (stepdad) tells him, and teaches him bit by bit in lessons that hurt Len's soul as much as his body. 

His dad is the only father he's ever known, the one he grew up with, the one he loved with a child's ignorance, and Len thinks, sometimes, that he wouldn't hate his real father so much if that hadn’t been the case. 

But the lessons of his father and the lessons of his dad are the same: be cold, be calculating, be logical. 

Hide the blazing fire in your heart under layers and layers of ice, and never let anyone see; don't let emotion muddy your vision and soften your heart. 

Don't let yourself feel the emotions at all, no matter what. 

It's the same lesson, really.

The Vulcan version just has a bit less violence and a lot more pseudo-philosophical quotes from a guy named Surak. 

Maybe it's actual philosophy, but what the hell would Len know? He's a slum kid, destined for a life of crime and prison, and his teachers barely tried hard enough to make him _literate_. 

And so Len learns. 

He learns to hide his feelings in the same way he hides his green blood, concealed in his face by the dark undertones he inherited from his mother; she'd worried so, when he was a child, regretting that he was not a touch darker so that the green would show less - regretting that he was not lighter so that the police would let him go by unmolested - regret, always regret. 

She never permitted Len to go the hospital, of course, or even to a doctor; Len learned very young to care for his wounds himself, and to avoid leaving the house with any whenever possible. 

It was not always possible, though luckily Len seemed to heal faster than normal, especially cuts; his skin weaving itself back together as if it, too, was embarrassed about showing off such inhuman traits. 

No one but you must ever know, Len's mother warned him, time and time again. Not your dad, not your friends, not a doctor, _no one_. 

The one time Len had had to go to a doctor, to get all his vaccinations to make him legal for kindergarten, his mother had forestalled any blood test by telling the doctor he had a blood disease. 

She hadn't specified which one, but during those days of panic, a mere hint had been enough. 

She'd told Len that the stigma of it that faced them both after that, the side-eyed looks and the sneers, the accusation of sexual improprieties or dirty needle habits, was still better than anyone finding out.

Len's dad knew of Len’s green blood, of course, he shed enough of it, though luckily he remained unaware of Len's true ancestry - in Central, with its labs and its military bases and its corrupt politicians and newshounds who could be paid to overlook certain accidents, it was not so unusual for children to be born with stranger characteristics than most, and Len's mother had explained that she had, while pregnant, unwisely wandered into one toxic waste dump or another that'd ended up dumped in the slums, and Len's dad had just grumbled about there not being a class action payout from it. 

The blood wasn't all of it, of course. There was more - a internal eyelid, thankfully translucent, that Len primarily used to protect his eyes when he was locked in their dusty, unfinished basement in winter or in the truck of a car during the height of summer. There was the way he was always a little cold, always preferring a jacket or parka even in the warm months. 

There were his ears. 

Len hid his too-pointed ears first with his hair and later, with bravado and scorn that suggested that anyone questioning him simply didn't understand the full extent of human diversity. 

The kids in Central's slums didn't really care to ask questions of how - they were not so young as to not know about the planes with their pesticides, the explosions from the secret laboratories everyone knew were there, the strange diseases that came through their water (drink soda instead, the schoolteachers advised with haunted eyes; if you must drink water, boil it first if you can, hope for the best if you can't) - but they were more than happy to mock Len about his almost elfin ears, particularly when he was still young and delicate.

Len's dad solved that problem when Len was eight, his mother dead and unable to interpose herself, by taking a knife to their sensitive tips. 

Len screamed for hours, days, in unending agony, but Lewis locked him in the basement before he left, and by the time he returned Len was mute and the wounds had begun to heal.

At least his hearing - far superior to others in his age group, and vitally useful to knowing when to flee as the police approached - wasn't impacted. 

(Len hadn't spoken for nearly a month after the incident, walking through his days in a daze that slipped away from him; his ears had always been extremely sensitive, and the trauma seemed to loop endlessly in his mind - it was only Lisa, brought home from the hospital and dropped into his arms, that brought him back into his body.)

And then, of course, there’s his skin. 

His skin, which he keeps as covered as much as he can; perfect and unblemished and _able to read people’s thoughts_ if he wasn’t careful about who he touched.

“Contact telepathy”, the tapes called it; as a kid, he’d thought it was kind of cool, played around with some thoughts about making a living conning people like a medium or even one of those fake-supernatural detectives on TV. 

Touching his dad in the midst of a rage – feeling the nasty curl of emotion, feeling the vicious pleasure in pain, feeling _nothing_ for Len but ownership – had put a quick end to those thoughts. He didn’t want to hear thoughts, if that’s what other people’s minds were like. 

Len's pretty sure that's it, though, or at least that was all he'd been able to detect. He'd worried perhaps most about certain, uh, genital differences, but his mother assured him that both he and his father had been entirely normal in that respect - the mohyel she'd gone to in secret after her equally secret home birth had been old and half blind, and had politely not mentioned the shade of Len's blood - and that his father had been normal enough to make her pregnant, after all, so how different could they really be?

Besides, Len doesn't _look_ all that different.

Sadly, Len's father had helpfully not included much of anything about Vulcan anatomy in the tapes he'd given Len's mother. As Len aged, he became increasingly convinced that the tapes were standard - some stupid Intro to Vulcan Culture 101 meant for alien species, not insiders, because it always seemed to portray the Vulcans as some sort of perfect species even though Len could pick out some inconsistencies they hadn't quite managed to whitewash away.

At any rate, it meant that Len had to hope for the best. 

And he did, making his way all, alone in the world – as far as he knew.

Turns out, he didn’t know as much as he thought he did.

It happened in juvie. 

Day one of Len’s very first stay, when he was still unaware of how vicious it could be and how seriously some of the boys took themselves; he’d laughed at the wrong person, and they’d come after him, six of them.

Len’s stronger than a regular human, and as he grows he finds he’s a _lot_ stronger, but he didn’t want to get into trouble – the more fool him – and he spent too much time trying to figure out _how_ he should fight back to actually _do_ it. They got him on the floor, first, punching and kicking, and one of them pulled out a knife.

That’s when Len started to panic, because he can’t get stabbed, not here, not in the middle of a group of stupid kids that’d spill everything, he _can’t_ – but he couldn’t get out either, not even with his increased strength, they’d pinned him too well – the knife, the shiv, darted forward and Len threw himself to the side, felt it scrape by his side instead of stab right into him, and the kid was rearing back for another hit when suddenly they were all hit by a tornado.

At least, that’s what it felt like, swift and furious and pulling the kids off to throw them across the room, but it wasn’t actually a tornado.

It's Mick. 

Mick Rory, the boy no one is friends with, who sits alone at lunch and is said to have murdered his whole family. 

He beats the boys so badly that they fled in tears, and then he picks Len up and gets him bandages from the nurse’s office so he can bandage himself up before anyone noticed anything had happened.

“Why’d you help me?” Len asks, suspicious, when it’s done and they’re assigned to be roommates by an indifferent teacher who doesn’t want to know any details. 

Mick looks shifty. 

“Tell me,” Len demands.

“The knife,” Mick finally admits. “It got you, just a little. It was green.”

“Blood disease,” Len says, automatically.

“I don’t think it is,” Mick says.

Len crosses his arms, a little painfully. “What do you think it is, then?”

“My grandmothers,” Mick says, hesitantly. “They used to say – this is probably real dumb –”

“ _Tell me_.”

“Are you a Vulcan?” Mick blurts out. 

Len stares at him, utterly lost for words. “How do you even know about those?” he hisses. 

“My grandmothers told me,” Mick says. 

“Were they Vulcans, too?”

“No,” Mick says, and Len’s shoulders slump. “They were something else, though. Not – normal.”

There are _more_ aliens? 

No, forget that; there were people who knew about Vulcans, it doesn't matter what they are. What matters is that they might have _answers_.

“Your grandmothers…” Len starts.

“Dead,” Mick says. “Sorry. What about you?”

“My father,” Len admits, his shoulders gone slumped again. He should've guessed already; he never has any luck. “Gone.”

“And he was a Vulcan?”

“Yeah,” Len says, figuring it couldn’t hurt to admit it, just this once. After all, Mick already knew so much. 

Mick nods. “My grandmothers were Klingons,” he offers. 

“Never heard of ‘em.”

“Yeah, figured,” Mick says. “My grandmothers were from the future.”

Len twists to gape at him, because sure, he knows aliens exist, but _time travel_? That's still weird and almost ridiculous enough not to be believed.

“Really!” Mick insists. “They got sent back in a time travel accident and got stuck. Twin sisters, Klingons; they did everything together, so I have no idea which one’s my actual grandmother, so I call 'em both grandmother. They said a lot of weird stuff, though, but one of the things they said was that Vulcans were the ones who made first contact with humans, and they taught me to recognize some of the signs in case it happened in my lifetime. You’ve got ‘em all except the ears.”

Len flinches involuntarily. He can’t help himself; that memory still appears in his dreams with a monotonous regularity that does nothing to reduce the horror.

Mick looks away, guilt on his face. He's close enough now to see the scars on the tops of Len's now-more-regularly-curved ears, though perhaps not close enough to see how they've slowly and painstakingly been starting to grow back into their original pointed shape. 

“It’s okay,” Len says, even though it very much is not. 

They sit in silence for a few moments.

Len doesn’t know what to do with the information that he’s not alone after all, he really doesn’t.

Mick, luckily, has something in mind already.

“Wanna be friends?” he asks, just the slightest touch shy; it didn’t fit his face or his body, already tall as a man and strong as an ox.

Len’s pretty sure he’s never had a real friend before. He wonders if Mick will know how to do it.

“Sure,” Len says. 

Turns out Mick _also_ doesn’t know how to have friends, but it’s okay. 

They work it out.

Most of the time.

The rest of the time, they go through the good times - 

“What are you going to go as for Halloween?” Lisa asks one year.

“An alien,” Len deadpans. He’s working on some plans for a bank heist – nothing too serious, just a bit of fun.

Mick sniggers. He’s on the couch, fiddling with something small and mechanical – maybe a clock or something. 

It’s nice, just the three of them here, squatting in this ridiculous house that’s deserted for the summer.

Len could get used to it.

“You can’t do the alien joke _every year_ , Lenny!” Lisa whines. 

“Watch me.”

“Ugh, come _on_ , Lenny!” she exclaims. “One year, Lenny. For me. Please?”

“Fine,” Len gives in with a groan.

“Really?” Mick asks, amused. “You never give in on that one.”

“One year, and you don’t bother me about it again,” Len tells Lisa.

She rolls her eyes at him. “Fine,” she lies.

He knows she’s lying, she knows she’s lying, but it doesn’t really matter. 

“Then we’re agreed,” Len says.

“But what’re you going to be?”

“Hey, Mick, pass me that box on the side table?” Len asks. 

Mick looks for it, frowning. His eyesight is a bit better at tracking moving objects and a bit worse at identifying sitting objects than humans. 

“Next to the remote.”

Mick finds it – a small box, no bigger than the palm of his hand. “This one?”

“Yeah. Open it for me?”

“It’s too small to have a Halloween costume,” Lisa says.

“Wanna bet?”

“Against you, big brother? Never.”

Len snorts and turns to look at Mick, who’s opened the box and is frozen solid, staring at the contents. “Well?” he asks, fairly sure about the answer, but still that slightest bit nervous regardless.

“It’s it _illegal_?” Mick asks.

“Has that ever stopped us?” Len points out.

“Good point,” Mick says, blinking. “Uh. Yes. I guess.”

“Say it with a bit of enthusiasm, why don’t you,” Len pretends to grouse. “It’s the only _logical_ next step, you know.”

“You’d better drop it with that logical shit,” Mick says, having seen Len's tapes by now, but his tone is entirely fond.

“Isn’t what illegal?” Lisa asks, looking between the two of them. “What’re you talking about?”

Mick holds up two matching rings. “Guess we’re going as groom and groom for Halloween this year,” he jokes.

Lisa’s shriek nearly splits both of their eardrums.

– and sometimes the bad times –

“ _You just got shot_!” Mick shrieks, years later, when a job goes particularly off the rails.

“I get shot all the time,” Len protests weakly, reaching for the bandages. “It was a through-and-through!”

“Yeah! Through and through your _heart_!”

Len grimaces down at his chest, where indeed there is a bullet hole in the middle of his left pectoral. And yet, for some reason, he’s definitely not dying. Judging from the way the blood keeps pouring out of the wound, his heart's doing just fine. 

“We’re getting a doc,” Mick says. His tone does not accept any other result.

“Fine,” Len sighs. “But I’d like one with a narcotics addiction and red-green color blindness.”

Mick blinks at him owlishly. 

“I have a list of 'em prepped,” Len says. “It’s in the phone book.”

“Red-green colorblind?”

“So they don’t notice the blood,” Len explains.

“You think they won’t notice the _hole in your heart_?”

“That’s why they need to have a narcotics addiction,” Len says. “We’re going to shoot ‘em up afterwards and let them think it was all a bad trip.”

“Fine,” Mick says, and stomps off.

The doc they find is as colorblind as a dog and doesn’t even blink at the gushing green blood, though he does run at least six x-rays to try to confirm his result regarding the heart thing.

“Uh,” he says, squinting at the readings. “I think - I mean - okay, your heart is where your liver ought to be and everything's incredibly fucked up. But you should be fine other than that? The bullet missed your lung. Or any organ, actually, you don't have much there.”

“Yippee,” Len says dryly, and they pay their bill with enough morphine to make sure the doc’s not going to be asking any questions anytime soon.

“Fucking Vulcans,” Mick says afterwards. "Probably should've guessed it when we found out you were practically a herbivore, food-wise, even though you keep on trying to eat meat because you're a fucking idiot..."

“Now, now, Mick,” Len says. “That’s not a very logical thing to say.”

“Vulcans can take their logic and shove it up my –”

Len starts laughing, which is rare enough for him that Mick twists around to stare.

“I thought I was the only one allowed to do that,” Len says, as innocently as he can manage.

Mick rolls his eyes at him. “Stop laughing. I thought you were having a fit.”

“Just a bit of leftover humanity, I assure you,” Len says. 

– and the plain old _weird_ times. 

“Uh, hi, Mick,” Len says into the phone, covering his eyes with his hand.

“That’s quick,” Mick grunts. At least he hasn't hung up. “Usually you stay angry at me for at least a few more months. Not sure _I’m_ ready to make up so quick.”

“Yeah, about that,” Len says, then swallows. Well, no way around it, so he may as well charge forward. “Uh. So, it turns out my alien species is overwhelmed by a desire to mate or die once every seven years, and my body’s decided that you’re my true mate, so can we maybe get over our disagreement faster than usual now and get to the mating thing before I die?”

“That’s…the worst pick-up line I’ve ever heard,” Mick says blankly. “And we’re _married_.”

“It’s not a pick-up line!”

“Uh, huh,” Mick says skeptically. “Your super logical no-emotions species has a built in fuck-or-die trope. Right. You could’ve just said that you were super horny and wanted a booty call, you know.”

“It’s _true_ ,” Len whines. He’s blushing. He never blushes, and he’s blushing. It's probably related to the way he feels like his entire body is cooking. “It’s like – salmon returning to their spawning point –”

“You’ve never seen a live fish in your life,” Mick, the farm boy, says, sounding vaguely pained. “That’s totally not how it works.”

“Mick! _Please_!”

Mick pauses. “Wait, you’re _actually serious_?”

“Yes,” Len says. “Now I’m already starting to totally lose it, so can we lock ourselves into a room and bang for a week already?”

“How often did you say this happens?” Mick asks.

“Every seven years,” Len says grumpily.

“You know, the timing of our honeymoon seems oddly suspicious to me now…”

“ _Shut up_. You coming over?”

“No, you’re coming over here,” Mick says. “I have a nice apartment set up, and I’ll make us some snacks.”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” Len promises.

“That’s not possible with traffic –”

Len is there in ten minutes. 

Mick’s very impressed.

He’s even more impressed when Len picks him up and carries him to bed.

Three cheers for Vulcan strength. 

And so it goes.

Len is remarkably good at keeping what he is a secret, and he adapts his ways to keep Mick’s heritage a secret, too, and the few times anyone sees him bleed, saying “Central City lead poisoning” with a wince and a shrug turns out to be a pretty convincing lie. 

And so it goes. 

Mick doesn’t know when, exactly, Vulcans are supposed to make contact, and it’s not like Len hears anything back from his father, so they both resign themselves to being just a little bit weirder than everyone else.

Right up until they meet the man from the future, who has a space ship.

Sure, it also travels through time, but that’s not really what they’re interested in.

Len looks at Mick.

Mick looks at Len.

There is no way they’re passing this up. 

(They end up having to hijack the Waverider when their trip is nearly derailed by space pirates, but it’s totally worth it for Len to punch his stupid father right in his stupid, logical, eyebrow-arching Vulcan face, despite the man's claims that he was barred from returning due to Earth not being ready for Contact. Mick’s grandmothers – they went and picked them up on the way – approve. Rip, who had no idea Len was a Vulcan, does not, but oh, well!)


End file.
